PRIOR PRACTICELife before the lawIt started with Lego.Construction attorney John Warren’s careerpath may have been set from an early age, whena childhood fascination with building blocks andbackyard forts gave way to horse barns and morecomplicated projects.

“I’ve built stuff all my life,” says Warren, whosemother and father worked in real estate and engi-neering, respectively. “My dad and I built a lot ofthings together, and any time we’d build anything,we’d sit down at the kitchen table and draw upplans to actually see how things would work. Thenwe’d go out and implement those plans.”As an undergrad at the University of Texas atAustin, Warren majored in architectural engineer-ing. His father arranged a summer job for him inHouston with a local homebuilder, and Warrenstarted at the bottom, sweeping out attics andgarages. He parlayed this experience into summergigs in Austin with a general contractor whose high-end, architecturally cutting-edge projects benefitedfrom the city’s tech boom in the early 2000s.

By the time Warren graduated in 2002, hewas able to stay on as a project manager. “Therewere a lot of owners that were environmentallyconscious and thinking outside the box, and I gotto get involved with some really cool projects,”Warren says. “I did residential construction on acommercial scale. We were doing multimillion-dollar projects, some of which had constructionWarren liked the detail-oriented nature ofmanaging such complex projects, and spending agood deal of his time outside on construction sitesappealed to him. Over the years, he became morefamiliar with the variety of legal issues that inevi-tably popped up on such complicated projects.

John C. WarrenCONSTRUCTIONLITIGATIONCOKINOS, BOSIEN& YOUNGHOUSTONConstructing a Career

How John Warren went from sweeping construction sitesto representing builders in court BY ALISON MACOR“Design issues, change orders, delays, unforeseensite conditions; and, of course, payment disputeswere commonplace,” says Warren. He began toconsider branching out into the legal field as a wayto expand his construction career. “I took the leap.”In 2008, Warren graduated from St. Mary’sUniversity School of Law and joined Cokinos,Bosien & Young, a Houston firm known for itsconstruction litigation and where Warren hadclerked as a law student.

“I didn’t go to law school to be a personal injurylawyer or do wills and estates,” says Warren. Still,the transition from construction site to courtroomhad its challenges. “In the engineering world,everything was exact, down to the fourth decimalpoint. In law, there’s a lot more gray.”The first case he handled on his own, however,was fairly black and white. Warren representedthe owner of a lumber mill in East Texas whowas being sued for overcutting timber across hisneighbor’s property line. He dove into a review ofthe documents.

He realized after examining the cut tickets andtrucking invoices that the documents dated backseveral years, which barred the claim because ofa statute of limitations. He submitted the docu-ments along with an affidavit and filed a motionfor summary judgment, and the plaintiff’s lawyercalled him the following day to say the case wasbeing dismissed. “Just like that, I got my first win,”he says, laughing. “Unfortunately, since then, theyhaven’t all been that easy.”These days, he often finds himself dealing withthe “hairier” issues that go hand in hand with themore involved cases he relishes, such as industrialprojects, pipeline cases, and construction disputesrelated to airports, hospitals and schools. Andwhile his familiarity with every phase of the con-struction process clearly gives him an advantage,as an attorney Warren still has to contend with the“real-world challenges” of construction.

“Details are often verbal. A lot of things are decided on or agreed upon in the field or on the phone
or based on a handshake, so they’re not perfectly
clear and in documents,” he says. “Most of the time
that would be fine, except when it’s not.”

“In the engineering world, everything
was exact, down to the fourth decimal
point. In law, there’s a lot more gray.”